“Music at the edge of catharsis”

A neo-classical symphonic work drawing from renaissance and baroque forms, orchestral textures ranging from impressionism to modern classical idioms, and a decade and a half of work as a narrative composer for film, theater, and interactive media. The album explores the expansive, transformative powers of love and grief by inhabiting space at the edge of catharsis.

More over it is a love letter to the parts of ourselves we often hide, silence, or force to change just so we can make it through.

COLLABORATORS

Why Deutsche Grammophon?

In the quiet midnight hours when every other student had left the music library, had fled the dimly-lit practice rooms for their dorms, when I was living inside the meticulously inked pages of Beethoven, Faure, Stravinksy, and Boulez scores, I could have been alone but I wasn’t. A kid, eighteen, who had just stumbled into the world of classical music, a world of purpose, freedom, and beauty, quickly found a study-partner in those addictive inspiring nights. An image that stared back at me time and time again. It brought me closer and closer to the infinite craft of music. It told me I could take out the disc, or album, put on headphones, and trust that what I was about to hear would move me beyond the power of words.

It was that iconic yellow badge. The Deutsche Grammophon badge.

While my story is quite different than many composers, musicians, and artists it is at its core a romantic story about falling in love, finding my identity, and finding belonging even when I feel like an outsider. That narrative continues to inform my own relationship to music and my audience. I want to invite listeners into a space to put themselves at its center and feel freely, almost recklessly. I want to inspire kids like me who grew up in broken families, or were raised on food stamps and didn’t have the means to provide an education in music, or who worked two jobs as a full-time student just to have a seat at the table.

I want to prove that music helps us belong. Music solves loneliness.

In my career I’ve been fortunate to perform on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, record and produce albums with artists like Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine) and Eddie Kramer (The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix) and in the past ten years of scoring films I’ve worked in almost every genre and scored projects staring Oscar winning actors like J.K. Simmons and Emmy winning actors like Giancarlo Esposito. I’ve waited this long to release a debut album because I knew that it was crucial that I wait until my craft and life experience caught up with my imagination and ambition. And now that I’ve poured the past five years of my own life and work into this album, I’m ready to partner with the label that helped raise me as an artist.

It is true partnership I’m looking for. I’m not looking just to have a label to help reach new audiences, rather, I want to be part of a team, part of a roster of artists that are working to bring new ideas and new narrative approaches to releasing music. Through high quality video formats and story-telling as well as personal and strategic content creation, my vision for this album (and works beyond this) are to bring people in. To narrow the gap between artist and audience, fostering community and furthering our craft in an age when generic, safe music trends and AI-generated “art” threaten to suffocate a market from the fresh air that new music brings.

My earliest memory - truly the first memory I have of my childhood - is gathering around the t.v. one night with my siblings to watch Fantasia. When the final sequence, featuring Mussorgsky’s ‘Night on Bald Mountain’, erupted on the screen I was transfixed by its might and magic. That began my lifelong devotion to music even though it would be over a decade later that I’d finally be afforded the chance to study it and be a part of it. This album, ‘The Ends of the Earth’ marks a new chapter in my own life as an artist.

Fitting the Brand

I’ve made a number of choices in bringing this album to life, and to market, that both serve the storytelling and integrity of the art and align with DG’s past and current catalog offerings. The music itself embodying both filmic and classical sensibilitles would appeal to fans of Max Richter, Jóhann Jóhannson, Bryce Dessner, and John Williams.

Bringing on collaborators like the LSO (who have featured on innumerable DG recordings, some of my favorite being with maestro Abbado and Sir Georg Solti), Eloisa-Fleur Thom (who performs with current DG artist Max Richter), and Anders Ladegaard (who did the album art for all of Jóhann Jóhannson’s works - both DG and film soundtracks).

I’ve put a focus this past year in growing my audience and have grown from 1600 followers to 7500+ - similar to artists already on your catalog like Peter Gregson, Meredi, and Marta Cascales Alimbau. That growth isn’t just about numbers, though, it’s about reaching people who make music a part of their daily lives and embrace new artists.

Music Video & Visualizer Concepts